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made her such a gifted scout.
    “I think being weapons-master has far more nuances than I ever before understood.” He nodded at her to follow him back into the stronghold—she was too dangerous in her strength not to be brought immediately to Dmitri’s attention. “How is Orios?”
    “Content. Proud as a father.” Another sparkling smile. “Titus is a wounded boar torn between the same pride and fury at being stripped of your skill, but the flitterbies know how to soothe him.”
    Children were rare, so rare among the immortals, and Titus had none of his blood, but he’d adopted the children of his warriors who had fallen in battle, given the little ones lives that had resulted in their becoming spoiled, indulgent adults who were nonetheless sweet of nature. “They do have their uses.” It was only once he and Zaria were inside the cool stone walls of the stronghold that he said, “My parents?”
    “Your father keeps an eye on Alexander’s forces.”
    Galen had expected as much; his father was Titus’s second.
    “Your mother”—Zaria deliberately touched her wing to the stone, as if testing the texture—“has begun to train the new crop of recruits.”
    Tanae had to have known of Zaria’s decision to defect—it was an expected and watched-for consequence on the departure of a commander—and yet she’d sent no message with the scout. His father, Galen had never expected anything from beyond his warrior’s education, but he’d spent decades trying to earn a word of praise from his mother . . . all the while knowing the quest to be a futile effort.
    The fact of the matter was that Tanae was an anomaly among angelkind. A warrior, talented and proud, she had never wanted a child. To her credit, she had raised Galen with scrupulous care, and while the flitterbies had attempted to make a spoiled pet of him—an attempt he’d repudiated with childish fierceness—it was always Tanae he strove to impress. Until he’d understood that her indifference wasn’t feigned to motivate him to greater heights. It ran bone-deep.
    The realization had broken the heart of the boy he’d been.
    “I’ll need to return to Titus’s court to take my formal leave,” Zaria said, her tone telling him she’d thought nothing odd of his questions. “I can carry a letter back to your parents.”
    The wounded boy he’d once been was long gone, replaced by a man who had never hidden from anything, no matter how devastating. “No, there’s no need.” So distant from the court his mother called home, he could finally give Tanae the one thing she’d always wanted—the liberty to forget she’d ever been forced into despised weakness by the child she’d carried in her womb.
    * * *
    “K eir comes,” Jason said, an instant before the healer’s face appeared in the doorway of the library room where Jessamy sat. Old eyes in a youthful face, the slender, graceful body of a dancer, Keir was angelkind’s most gifted healer, his features so fine they were almost feminine . . . but no one would ever mistake him for a woman.
    Entering on feet as silent as those of the feline weaving around his ankles, he took a seat across from her, the golden brown of his wings stroking down to kiss the thick copper-hued carpet. “Hello, Jason.” The cat jumped up to settle on the table beside him as he spoke, a small smoky gray Sphinx with eyes of luminous gold.
    “Keir.” The black-winged angel whispered away and out of the room, pulling the door shut behind himself.
    “I worry about our beautiful Jason,” Keir said, his gaze on the heavy slab of wood beyond which Jason stood guard. “When you’ve survived what I suspect he has, there really is nothing left to fear.”
    Jessamy’s hand fisted in the pale yellow of her gown, her mind circling around the quiet panic that had colored her interactions with Galen. “Isn’t that a gift?”
    Keir shook his head, his silky black hair brushing his shoulders. “We should all have